Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)
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Question 887: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government the capital expenditure which has been expended by his Department on waste disposal technologiesother than landfill or incineration since 1997; and the amount expended on each technology. [20026/05]

Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Capital funding is not made available by my Department for the construction of facilities for final disposal of waste. In the Dublin and the south-east waste management regions limited grant assistance has been provided from the environment fund on a pilot basis to assist the development of infrastructure solutions by means of public private partnerships.

Capital funding provided by the Department for waste infrastructure construction is specifically directed at recycling and recovery infrastructure; bring centres, civic amenity sites, materials recovery facilities at which recyclables collected largely at kerbside are separated into individual waste streams which are more readily recyclable and therefore of much higher value, and various biological treatment facilities, including composting.

All these facilities treat waste as material for recovery or recycling and as such are not disposal facilities. Some €50 million in capital assistance has been made available for these facilities. A subvention is also provided towards the operating costs of bring centres and civic amenity sites.